The Renaissance Arrives

In June, I sat in the grandstand at Hayward Field and watched Jenny Barringer run a preliminary heat of the women's steeplechase at the USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. As Barringer, who is

22, led a field of 13 over the first water jump, I commented to a nearby coach that she might be the next big thing in American distance running. Then I stopped myself. "She's not the next big thing," I said. "She's the big thing, right now." He agreed.

The United States is squarely in the midst of a distance-running renaissance. There is a larger cadre of talented young Americans running right now than at any time since the early 1980s, and June's national meet in Eugene was in many ways a celebration of this new generation. In both the men's 5,000m and 10,000m, each of the top three finishers graduated high school in 2000 or later, and one -- men's 5,000m third-placer Evan Jager -- took his prep diploma in 2007. At the 2004 Olympic trials, only one of the current six, Dathan Ritzenhein, a college junior, was mature enough to compete for an Olympic spot. The young guns are putting up big league miles in training, racing hard, and they look ready to compete on the world stage in a way that American fans simply haven't seen in the modern, East African-dominated era of distance running.

So things are good for American athletes and supporters. These are halcyon days by almost any measure. The U. S. sent its best-ever distance squad to the Berlin world championships in August, a team on which no less than eight athletes were positioned to compete for top-five and even top-three finishes. When else has the U. S. produced three sub-4:00 1500m women in one year? When else have we seen kids who can't legally drink a beer running 13:25 or better for 5,000m? Never; we haven't.

But the U. S. was asleep in the 1990s, obsessed with speed work and low mileage, and the rest of the world was not. The progress that American athletes have made since the dismal Sydney Olympics, in which only three Americans placed in the top 10 in any distance event, and none in the top seven, is big news. Yet Kenya and Ethiopia never took a break from producing distance runners, and they are cranking them out today like never before. Renaissance or no, the U. S. is barely in position to compete with those countries by any meaningful measure of the word. The U. S. has neither Kenya's depth nor Ethiopia's quality up front. So how are things?

Improving.

Eleven of the 26 men to run under 27:47 for 10,000m in American history are active in 2009. Of the 39 American men who hold PRs under 13:20 for 5,000m, 19 ran their bests in the nine years since 2000. The only other decade that competes is the one from 1980 to 1989, when 13 of our sub-13:20 guys set their PRs. In the 1990s, only four men ran under 13:20 for the first time, though [former] American record-holder Bob Kennedy still dominates the U. S. all-time list, and he was active in that decade.

U. S. women's lists indicate an even more compelling renaissance narrative, although women's running developed later and so an upward trend isn't surprising. Nevertheless, 14 of the 21 American women with PRs under 15:10 for 5,000m have posted them since 2000, as have 12 of the 19 with PRs under 31:45 for 10,000m. (I chose these four marks -- 13:20, 27:47, 15:10 and 31:45 -- because they're this year's world championships "A" standard in those events.)

Of course, there are caveats and qualifications to be made. U. S. marathon lists don't reflect the same surge in recent performances that we see on the track. And even in the 5,000m and 10,000m, if we look at performances and not performers, this decade loosens its stranglehold (see "All-Time Rankings" at arrs.net).Perhaps the current generation hasn't had a chance to get its feet wet in the marathon, and perhaps they just don't race as often. Or perhaps something else is going on, although these seem like reasonable assumptions to me.

Still, the U. S. isn't a powerhouse distance nation. Through the first half of 2009, which started as an off-year in the men's 10,000m, one Ethiopian and three Kenyans have posted 10,000m times faster than Meb Keflezighi's 27:13.98 American record. U. S. fans rave about Matt Tegenkamp, whose 13:04.90 PR and fourth-place finish at the 2007 worlds make him a legitimate medal contender. But already in 2009, 15 men have bettered Tegenkamp's PR. Five are Ethiopian, nine are Kenyan, and one, Bernard Lagat, is a naturalized American citizen of Kenyan birth. [Ed. Note: As of the publishing of this article, Tegenkamp broke through the 13 minute barrier with a 12:58.56 in Brussels.]

Things are not much better on the women's side, where Ethiopian Meselech Melkamu shocked the running world with a 29:53.80 10,000m in mid-June, the second fastest time in history. Behind Melkamu, Kenya's reigning world cross country champion Florence Kiplagat ran 30:11.53, a fraction of a second up on third-placer Wude Ayalew of Ethiopia. When Shalane Flanagan snagged her bronze medal at last summer's Olympic Games 10,000m, she set a still-standing American record of 30:22.22.

Just like that, she'll be fighting harder for a medal in Berlin than she did in Beijing. Not incidentally, Flanagan is also the American record-holder for 5,000m in 14:44.80, a time already eclipsed by 14 women this year. It should come as no surprise that all 14 hail from Ethiopia or Kenya.

What is a fan of American running to make of all this? Who knows. It might be easier to form a cogent thought or two if anyone knew exactly why Ethiopia and Kenya are so much better at building distance runners than the rest of the world, but no one does, at least not really. And some of the things that observers have identified -- like the importance of altitude training, and the strength and efficiency that children develop when they run and walk to school every day -- are not easily translated to the American experience. Sure, Americans expect elites in this country to sleep in altitude tents and make forays to remote mountain training centers, but nobody is about to move a majority of the U. S. population up to Flagstaff , Ariz., or Mammoth Lakes, Calif. And school buses are good things. No parents would sacrifice the safety of their child for the off-chance that he or she might one day make it as a world-class 10,000m runner.

But that renaissance in American distance running isn't a myth. It may not be reasonable to expect the next generation, the kids who will follow Jenny Barringer, 20-year-old Berlin qualifier Evan Jager, or 19-year-old American junior record-holder German Fernandez, to make the jump in both depth and quality the U. S. will need to compete with the East Africans. But here's the thing: The U. S. has moved beyond the accident of the 1990s, and there is no reason why coaches can't continue to leverage the country's large population, geographical diversity, and knowledge of human physiology to compete with Kenya's and Ethiopia's intangibles, whatever they may be. The new world junior mile record-holder, Kenyan William Biwott Tanui, is not the model the U. S. needs. It's German Fernandez, and he runs for Oklahoma State.

A Part of Hearst Digital Media
Runner's World participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.